


TweetDick

by jeffgoldblumvevo



Category: Victorious (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, F/F, Future Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-12
Updated: 2018-07-12
Packaged: 2019-06-09 05:14:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,091
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15260193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jeffgoldblumvevo/pseuds/jeffgoldblumvevo
Summary: "Yes," Tori says flatly, "I do. I pay you a salary, because you perform work for me, Jade. Like the penis joke last night, which I technically paid for. I paid you three hundred dollars this week, for a penis joke and a blurry picture of my ass. So, you know: thanks. Thanks, for that."





	TweetDick

**Author's Note:**

  * For [metaphasia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/metaphasia/gifts).



Jade is ostensibly Tori's manager now, in a sense where it says "talent management" on the business cards Tori made her but also in a sense how she doesn't actually make any decisions. Mostly she just rides along in the limos. But also, she tweets.

"I don't - I don't get this, I don't get it at all," Tori said once, scrolling and frowning with her eyebrows drawn together. She looked like a sad baby bird, but that's what she always looks like. "I can never come up with anything to say, and then when I do come up with something clever everybody makes fun of me - "

"Jesus fuck, it's not like it's complicated Vega, you just - say shit. Say whatever. Live tweet your fucking dinner salad or something."

"It just seems kind of shallow."

"That's the _point,_ " Jade told her, exasperated, "if _Drake Parker_ can get a million followers with his weird blurry sky pictures and stunning reality TV commentary, I'm not sure where you got the idea this is a brain trust app," and then Tori looked at her sadly again, like Jade had just crushed another one of her small, beautiful dreams, and just handed her the phone silently, which Jade took as a sign that she should just take care of it herself and not make a big deal about it. 

She could do this for an actual living, she figures, if she wanted, because it's not like it's hard. Tori's fans are mostly teenagers - beautiful, Instagram teenagers, who use lots of emojis and reply to everything she posts with varying hysterical degrees of mangled internet slang. Twice a day, vary the times, adapt the message to whatever weird thing they're doing that day, and bam: traffic. Jade likes numbers, she likes that it's quantifiable. She can pull out her phone at any given moment and have a list of statistics: replies, followers, hits, views. All of which are fancy ass words for reputation, which turns into money, which Jade also likes. It's that old fashioned game of knowing somebody who knows somebody, except now, you gotta know _everybody._ Good old cold-blooded business: Jade is excellent at it, and Tori is not. She's fucking terrible, in fact, which is why she's so damn lucky she's got Jade.

"I hate you," Tori says, arms crossed, glaring down the TV screen. "This is all your fault. No, don't touch me. I'm not in the mood."

"Baby," Jade says consolingly, going for her neck. Tori yanks her shoulder up to her cheek, blocking her shot. "Oh, come on. It's not that bad."

"Yes it is!" Tori flings her arms out at Entertainment Tonight, which is four minutes into a disconcertingly long segment on Jade's admittedly ill-thought-out dick joke from last night. In her defense, she was drunk at the time. "My fans are _young,_ Jade. Marcia already called, apparently I got a letter from Moms Against Indecency, and - "

"Moms are against what now?" Jade interrupts. "Wait, did you say _letter?_ Who the fuck - "

"It's a real thing, Jade!" Tori cries, a little more distraught than Jade had been expecting for this argument. She feels a little twinge that might possibly be construed as a mild form of shame, if looked at in the right light. Jade's not comfortable with it. "The Toy Story role isn't a hundred percent yet, and I know you think it's stupid and juvenile and beneath me or whatever to keep 'riding the tween wave', but - "

Jade cuts her off moreso to stop the air quotes than anything else. "You're _not_ gonna lose the Toy Story role. Not over this."

"I might," Tori says, but she already looks a little reassured, just from that. Jade is both amazed and horrified at how easy it is with her, sometimes. "Not about some stupid penis joke, maybe. But if it was a penis joke on top of like, a few other things. Like a lesbian relationship with my _employee_ that leaked to TMZ because _somebody_ couldn't wait _ten minutes_ for the Uber to show up before the groping commenced - "

"Fuck off, I'm not your employee," Jade says. 

"Yes you are. I pay your salary."

"No you don't," Jade says, frowning. 

"Yes," Tori says flatly, "I do. I pay you a salary, because you perform work for me, Jade. Like the penis joke last night, which I technically paid for. I paid you three hundred dollars this week, for a penis joke and a blurry picture of my ass. So, you know: thanks. Thanks, for that."

Jade blinks, thrown. "Wait," she says, "that money comes from you?"

"Jesus Christ," Tori says, covering her face with both hands. 

Jade's twinge is a full on tweak now, with approaching signs of actual pain, which is a total no-go, so she reaches out and takes one of Tori's hands, tugging until Tori falls sideways into her lap with a groan. Easy like Sunday morning, Jade thinks smugly, smoothing Tori's stupid hair into a neat little pile on her thigh and working her other hand beneath Tori's shirt so she can scratch her stupid shoulder. Tori melts like warm chocolate, eyes fluttering closed. Jade takes the opportunity to turn off Entertainment Tonight. 

This is the sort of moment where a softer, kinder person would say something romantic, but if Tori wanted soft and kind she wouldn't be dating Jade, so, "you're not actually stupid enough to think they're gonna fire you because you're gayer than a Xena marathon."

"Shut up," Tori grumbles. "You're gayer than an Autostraddle recap of Orange is the New Black."

"You've used that one before," Jade says. "You're gayer than a Sleater Kinney music video."

"You're gayer than an undercut."

" _You're_ the one who had the undercut, sunshine, and wasn't _that_ an unfortunate six months. Besides, everyone knows you're gayer than a tennis lesson."

Tori breaks first, like always, muffling her laughter into Jade's stomach. "Oh my God _no,_ I would be horrible at tennis. I can't even hold a frying pan by myself."

This is true; she needs help with pancakes. Tori needs help with everything, actually, which is again, why it's good that she has Jade: to help her hold a frying pan, to remind her that she looks terrible in yellow, to yell at her horrible publicists and monstrous assistants and to watch Black Mirror episodes before she does and warn her which ones are gross and which ones are stupid and which ones are just too fucking depressing. It's easy for Jade to perform all of these duties, because none of them are all that hard, because the hard stuff is what Tori does: the forgiving, and the talking, and the calling every night when they're in separate cities. Sometimes Jade has a moment of clarity, when they're lying in bed at night and Tori reaches out for her hand in her sleep, or when Tori is upset about something, on the verge of crying like she does, and manages to talk herself back into a good mood without any input from Jade at all, and Jade looks at her stupid baby bird face and thinks: _I'm the luckiest fucking bitch in the whole world._ She knows she doesn't deserve the love she has, but she's got it now, and she's never giving it up. Not without a fight. Beck was one thing, but now she's got _Tori_ , who never forgets to buy mustard and can make Jade come like a freight train, sometimes three times in a row without having to stop for a drink of water. She's a keeper. 

"Okay, stop paying me," Jade says. "How about that?"

"No," Tori says, dismayed. "I can't tweet!"

"I'll keep tweeting for you, Dumbo, just quit paying me for it."

"But - "

"It's not like I do anything else," Jade says, and Tori's face falls a little, her eyebrows getting all pinched up, "oh quit it, you know it's true." She huffs, irritated that she has to say it: "it's a girlfriend thing. Doing the tweets, and posting pictures. It's a girlfriend thing, not an employee thing."

Tori's face gets all goopy about that, which it always does when Jade breaks out the g-word. "I can't afford you anyway," she says, a little wobbly, like she might be thinking about saying something else, something that's full-on gooey. Jade's limit is goop, full stop: when they escalate to goo, Tori just ends up crying all over Jade's hair and she doesn't even usually get sex at the end of it. 

"No, you can't," she says breezily, pinching Tori's thigh. Tori yelps, slapping her hand away. "Anyway, I make enough off the podcast, and once the royalties come through on that...that _song_ \- "

Tori's grin splits her face in half. "The love song, you mean," she says gleefully, "the love song that you wrote _for me,_ and then sold to _Taylor Swift._ Is that the song you mean, babycakes?"

"I told you to never mention that name in this house!" Jade spits. 

Tori probably doesn't even hear her, she's cackling so hard, the fucking traitor. 

"Whatever," Jade spits, "I'll take her fucking...pastel, rose-scented cash. I'll write another one and take more of it, even, just wait. And then I'll buy guns with it. You know - to _shoot you_ with."

"Now _that's_ gay," Tori says sagely. "Shooting your lesbian sugar mama with a gun you bought with a country singer's money."

"Now _that_ would probably get you fired," Jade says.

Tori snorts, and hitches up on her elbows, angling her chin up for a kiss. Jade dips down just far enough to hover, pulling back and back and back, making her chase it, until she's crawling up into Jade's lap, snorting with laughter, her hair frizzing out over her shoulders, staticky from the friction. 

Tori grabs Jade's cheeks and holds them while they kiss, like she needs to make sure Jade will sit still. Like Jade is going anywhere, like Jade has anywhere else better to be. Like Jade's heart isn't stuck permanently in her throat, lodged by the fear of the day Tori finally wakes up and realizes she could have anyone she wants, and doesn't have to cart her weird, goth, sort-of-friend from high school around in her limo anymore. Not to mention the chip on Jade's shoulder, which she's fairly certain comes with an excess baggage charge of some kind. 

"Sorry about the dick joke," Jade mumbles, aiming the words at Tori's chin, like that'll help it be less embarrassing or something. Tori snorts again and kisses Jade's nose. 

"Just - remember how many twelve year olds follow me, okay?" she asks. "And cursing is still okay, but just - just go easy, alright, and remember - "

"I _got_ it, Pollyanna, jeez," Jade says, and softens it with another kiss. "You're a pretty Disney princess."

"I _am_ , literally, a pretty Disney princess, with contractual obligations," Tori says stubbornly. 

"And great tits," Jade adds, tweaking her favorite one for emphasis. Tori yelps again: a sound that never gets old. 

She doesn't know what it's like for other people - maybe this is how it always feels. Maybe everybody is always a little afraid of fucking up, afraid of themselves, of their own anger and insecurity and Jade just needs to get over herself. Tori definitely thinks so, and tells her this often: another piece of hard work she does without thought, without holding a grudge. Maybe one day this merry-go-round will fly off its base and hurl them into a brick wall of disaster, but Jade's not holding her breath. They go to parties together and hold hands in public, Jade's already past several of her former breaking points. She's got more songs she hasn't shown anyone yet. She'll never run out of songs, if this is how it's always gonna feel. 

"Love you," Tori says casually, like it's nothing. Jade scowls, trying not to let it show on her face, but Tori just laughs again, because she's hip to Jade's stupid game and always has been. "Can we just order something? I'm too tired to cook."

"Yeah, your noodle arms are worn out from all that rehearsing today, I can see how holding a spoon might tip you over into a coma."

Tori slides off Jade's lap, already reaching for her phone. "Princesses don't hold their own spoons," she says imperiously. "You'll probably have to feed me by hand."

"The bullshit I do for you," Jade says, fondly. Too fondly to hide. She doesn't even care. It's whatever, at this point.


End file.
